Economic sanctions have made flying dangerous in countries that oppose America

 

When the dream of a smooth flight turns into the nightmare of an airliner crash, understanding what went wrong is sometimes straightforward.

Serialisation makes room for nuanced characters and difficult themes. But commercial imperatives and narrative demands are frequently at odds.

 

As serious long-form storytelling has migrated to the small screen, so, too, has the romantic comedy. With longer running times and multi-season arcs, characters have been allowed to develop more fully and ingratiate themselves with viewers more completely.

From the dozens of e-mails in people’s inboxes, begging them to give their consent to be sent further messages, you could deduce that the senders of newsletters and the like are hardest hit by the European Union’s GDPR.

 

Who will be the main loser from Europe’s new data-privacy law?

How much should company bosses be paid relative to their employees? The newly disclosed figures have proved more popular with politicians than investors. Check out the graph made by our Data Team.

 

A spate of scandals in Europe suggest that prosecutors, as well as the politicians who influence how much freedom judicial investigators enjoy, are becoming ever less tolerant of corporate corruption.

 

The common solution suggested by some politicians is that putting up protectionist barriers will undo the economic damage suffered by those who lost out earlier. This is not what is happening.

 

Although they lack the intense personal drama of a presidential race, America’s mid-term elections in November will be hugely important.

 

Our model’s best guess is that the Democrats will win 222 seats, 27 more than they won at the most recent elections.

Democracy’s worldwide retreat makes no exception for South-East Asia. With different kinds of struggles in the Philippines, Cambodia or Myanmar, we can see how there is more to freedom than voting.

 

As the territory held by Islamic State (IS) shrivelled in Syria, American generals spoke of “stabilisation” and “consolidation”. But seven months after an American-led coalition drove the jihadists from Raqqa, their putative capital, “stable” is not how residents describe the city.

 

New information on the Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 shot down by an anti-aircraft missile over Ukraine in 2014. Last week a UN-mandated Joint Investigation Team (JIT) announced it had determined that the missile belonged to a unit deployed to the area by the Russian Army’s 53rd anti-aircraft brigade, presumably to help Russian-backed secessionists fighting the Ukrainian army.